If you've ever wondered how to measure social media, public relations, public affairs, media relations, internal communications or blogs you're in the right spot. In this space I'll be regularly ranting and raving about measurement standards, research news, techniques and the latest developments in the world of PR research and evaluation. When I'm not here, you can find me in my garden in Durham New Hampshire or in my sailboat out on the Oyster River.

How to introduce me

For those who bear the burden of introducing me at a conference...

Katie Delahaye Paine (twitter: KDPaine) is the CEO and founder of KDPaine & Partners LLC and author of, Measuring Public Relationships, the data-driven communicators guide to measuring success. She also writes the first blog and the first newsletters dedicated entirely to measurement and accountability. In the last two decades, she and her firm have listened to millions of conversations, analyzed thousands of articles, and asked hundreds of question in order to help her clients better understand their relationships with their constituencies.
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December 2009

December 22, 2009

So I'm a journalist at heart, and a former employ of the Washington
Post, which gives me a very very loose affinity with the authors of
this masterpiece. But in all the brouhaha about the end of journalism
as we know it, some of the very best journalism is still being created,
and I consider this photo essay series to be among the best I've ever seen.

As it happens, thanks to my friend Ron Wyman who is doing a documentary on the movie Someplace like America that will be shot in Berlin, NH, the photographer Michael Williamson was hanging out in my house in Berlin last week.

Whichever team scores best in each category wins an Amazon
gift certificate. This allows us to easily identify best and worst
practices, and figure out what we need to do to continuously improve. And it works, since we implemented the system a year ago, almost
every team has seen its performance on each criteria double.

But now that we’ve gotten the basics down, we’re going to
add another metric – engagement – i.e. the degree to which an employee is
engaged in the present and future of KDPaine & Partners. And so we began to talk about what an
engagement metric would look like.

As with any good measurement system, we started with the
goal:

·Our goal is to have a team of people all of whom
are essential to the success of the company not just today but five years from
today.

And we came up with some easy metrics:

·The number of blog comments or yammer messages that
an employee makes, since that’s where we discuss measurement theory and the
bigger issues facing our industry.

·Time spent on our internal blog

·Number of times you get voted “hero of the month”
– a monthly honor given by the entire company that goes to the employee who has
gone the farther above and beyond their daily job responsibilities.

Another component, for me, is the ratio of "organizational impact" messages
to the “all about me” messages.

The former being those messages that start with “Maybe we
should try this” with a link to an article, blog posting.Or the demonstrations of big picture
understanding. “What implications does this have on us or our competitors? Or even
the “why do we do it this way?” questions that can alter the way we do
business.

And then there are the “all about me” emails. You know the
type and I'm sure can fill in the blanks. “Sorry I’m late/can’t come in/will miss the
meeting ______ , I have to take my
kid/pet/parent/significant other to
school/doctor/hockey practice/court. “All legitimate, but all about the employee, and no information that is
of any benefit whatsoever to the organization.

You need and obviously see both, but am I wrong in thinking that there should
more of the former than there are of the latter?Is there a proper ratio?

More importantly, what are we missing, what other metrics should I consider?All ideas are welcome.

December 15, 2009

The Canadian Council of Public Relations Firms has taken a step that we think is an industry first. The CCPRF has issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) on behalf of our members inviting suppliers to provide Canada`s PR firms with a new approach to monitoring traditional and online media.

December 14, 2009

I have many relatives who may be horrified by my confessions about my Christmas shopping habits, but here goes.

First of all, these confessions come from a reformed shopaholic. I used to be deep into retail therapy and loved browsing in every shop I could fine. Christmas was an orgy of presents and chic wrapping paper. But of late I've come to dread the whole thing, in fact, in these recessionary times, love has turned to hate. I hate the thought of sending jobs and dollars overseas, I hate the service that you get in most stores, I hate the crowds and parking hassles, i hate feeling guilty about the gas I'm using and the money I shouldn't be spending. So I've decided to give in to my better instincts and make Al Gore proud. .

I start all my shopping at the Swap shop -- aka the Durham Solid Waste Recycling center which epitomizes the notion that one woman's junk is another woman's treasure. It is always filled with treasures like old decanters and interesting containers for herb vinegars, spiced nuts and all the other things I produce in my kitchen, as well as picture frames that can get painted to match my friend's decor.

Next stop is Goodwill, where I get to feel good not just because I've found a wonderful bargain, but I've kept something out of a landfill, AND helped put a fellow American back to work. (Did you know that once every 42 seconds, Goodwill puts someone back to work? and yes, in full transparency, they are a client, but I was shopping there long before they decided to benchmark their social media success)

This year I got a gorgeous set of wine glasses ($.99 each) some really interesting decanters (1.99 each) and on my way out found a to-die-for pair of black heels ($5.99) that I put right on my feet and wore to the next speech.

Next I spent 2 hours trying to find LED lights for my tree, until I realized I was spending more in fossil fuel than they'd ever save.. so I returned home to finish my shopping. I still need to put in a few hours on line, but essentially the rest of my "shopping" I'll do from my shelves of home made jams, jellies, pickles etc.

Google announced yesterday that it will soon be showing real-time results of public content from many sources, including Facebook fan pages. As reported by InsideFacebook and Mashable, this is a big deal.

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Measure What Matters

Katie Delahaye Paine's great little book Measure What Matters shows organizations of all sizes how to evaluate and improve their public relations and social media efforts. OrderMeasure What Matters now.